Iraqi-run tribunal is major progress toward democratic rule of law
The first criminal charges against Saddam Hussein, filed Sunday by the Iraqi Special Tribunal, show that an important but not often heralded process is at work beneath that nation's turbulent surface.
More than just a court, the tribunal is a key player in progress being made in the establishment of rule of law in Iraq.
Why? Because the tribunal, an ad hoc court under Iraqi law created to mete out justice to the ancien régime, will foster a rule-of-law culture; train a generation of Iraqi judges and lawyers in criminal prosecution; and set new standards for detentions, interrogations, and trials.
Despite its transformative potential, however, the tribunal has, since its inception in December 2003, come under fire from a variety of sources. Some argue that it is insufficient to safeguard the rights of the accused; others object to its power to apply the death penalty. Most critics would have preferred a UN tribunal. Whether the Iraqi Special Tribunal satisfies Western standards or not,these critics ignore the net benefits to Iraq of a locally run tribunal in aiding the establishment of democracy.
By any measure, Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule was brutal, and there is broad agreement in the new Iraqi government and in the international community that the former regime's disdain for its people should be laid bare in a court of law. There is a split in the international community, however, on how best to organize the trials. Critics, including the UN, contend that the trials can satisfy international standards of due process only if they are authorized by an international mandate and are presided over by eminent international jurists. For these critics, the appropriate model is a war-crimes tribunal similar to the one established by the Security Council for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
But Iraq is not Yugoslavia. The conditions that led the international community to institute the Yugoslavia Tribunal - principally, lack of political will, infrastructure, and adequate resources in Yugoslavia itself - are absent in Iraq's case. In fact, not only are Iraqis willing and able to conduct the trials, but their doing so within Iraq can play a key part in establishing the legitimacy of the new Iraqi government and promoting the rule of law.
The first case against Hussein is related to the 1982 massacre of Shiite villagers following a failed assassination attempt against him. By dragging into plain view this atrocity and others committed under Hussein's repressive rule, these trials will undermine any lingering nostalgia for the "good old days" of his regime and discredit his remaining supporters.
A key benefit to having the Iraqis conduct these trials is that they will be held locally and in Arabic, making them fully accessible to the Iraqi press and the Iraqi public. Like Germans after Nuremberg, Iraqis sympathetic to the Baathist regime won't be able to say, "it didn't happen."
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